History
The seven families were first named in a document (from the year 1306) in which John II, Duke of Brabant restores and asserts the existing privileges of the seven families after the citizens of Brussels had violently demanded participation in the city's government. The families named in the document are
- Sleeus
- Sweerts
- Serhuyghs
- Steenweeghs
- Coudenbergh
- Serroelofs
- Roodenbeke
All the members of the city council were exclusively recruited and elected from among those families who could prove patrilinear or matrilinear descent from the original seven families. Although tradesmen formed guilds to counter this oligarchical system and in 1421 after violent confrontations gained some rights to participate in the city's government, the rule of the seven houses remained predominant until the end of the Ancien Régime, when these special privileges were abolished. This meant the end of the oligarchical system of the seven nobles houses of Brussels. In French, the Seven nobles houses of Brussels are called 7 lignages de Bruxelles, in Dutch 7 geslachten van Brussel.
Read more about this topic: Seven Noble Houses Of Brussels
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)